They were on Luis Amiama’s banana plantation in Guayubín, Montecristi, sitting on a sunny terrace and watching the muddy water of the Yaque River as it flowed past. His compadre explained that he and Juan Tomás were organizing this operation to keep the regime from ruining the country completely and precipitating another Cubanstyle Communist revolution. It was a serious plan that had the support of the United States. Henry Dearborn, John Banfield, and Bob Owen, at the legation, had given their formal backing and made the head of the CIA in Ciudad Trujillo, Lorenzo D. Berry (“The owner of Wimpy’s Supermarket?” “That’s right”), responsible for supplying them with money, weapons, and explosives. The United States, uneasy about Trujillo’s excesses ever since the attempt on the life of the Venezuelan President, Rómulo Betancourt, wanted to get rid of him; at the same time, they wanted to be sure he would not be replaced by a second Fidel Castro. This was why they were backing a serious, clearly anti-Communist group that would establish a civilian-military junta and hold elections within six months. Amiama, Juan Tomás Díaz, and the gringos were in agreement: Pupo Román should preside over the junta. There was no one better to secure the cooperation of the military and an orderly transition to democracy.
“Abduct him, ask him to resign?” Pupo was appalled. “You’ve got the wrong country and the wrong man, compadre. Don’t you know him? He’ll never let you take him alive. And you’ll never get him to resign. You have to kill him.”
The driver of the jeep, a sergeant, was silent, and Román took deep drags from a Lucky Strike, his favorite brand of cigarettes. Why had he agreed to join the conspiracy? Unlike Juan Tomás, in disgrace and cashiered from the Army, he had everything to lose. He had reached the highest position a military man could aspire to, and though things weren’t going well for him in business, his farms still belonged to him. The danger that they would be seized had disappeared with the payment of four hundred thousand pesos to the Agrarian Bank. The Chief didn’t cover the debt out of respect for his person, but because of his arrogant feeling that the family must never look bad, that the image of the Trujillos and their relations must always be spotless. And it wasn’t an appetite for power, the prospect of being named Provisional President of the Dominican Republic—and the possibility, which was very real, of then becoming the elected President—that led him to give his support to the conspiracy. It was rancor, the accumulated effect of the infinite offenses to which Trujillo had subjected him since his marriage to Mireya, which had made him a member of the privileged, untouchable clan. That was why the Chief had promoted him over other men, appointed him to important positions, and occasionally presented him with gifts of cash or sinecures that allowed him to enjoy a high standard of living. But he had to pay for the favors and distinctions by accepting arrogance and abuse. “And that matters more,” he thought.
During these five and a half months, each time the Chief humiliated him, General Román, as he did now while the jeep was crossing Radhamés Bridge, told himself that he soon would feel like a whole man, with his own life, even though Trujillo went out of his way to make him feel absolutely worthless. Luis Amiama and Juan Tomás might not suspect it, but he was in the conspiracy to prove to the Chief that he wasn’t the incompetent fool Trujillo believed him to be.
His conditions were very concrete. He would not lift a finger until he saw with his own eyes that the Chief had been executed. Only then would he proceed to mobilize troops and capture the Trujillo brothers and the officers and civilians most involved with the regime, starting with Johnny Abbes García. Luis Amiama and General Díaz must not mention to anyone—not even the head of the action group, Antonio de la Maza—that he was part of the conspiracy. There would be no written messages or telephone calls, only direct conversations. He would cautiously begin to place officers he trusted in key posts, so that when the day arrived all the installations would obey his orders.
This is what he had done, naming his classmate and close friend General César A. Oliva as the head of the Fortress of Santiago de los Caballeros, the second largest in the country. He also arranged to appoint General García Urbáez, a loyal ally, as commander of the Fourth Brigade, stationed in Dajabón. And he was counting on General Guarionex Estrella, commander of the Second Brigade, in La Vega. He wasn’t very friendly with Guaro, an avid Trujillista, but he was the brother of Turk Estrella Sadhalá, who was in the action group, and it was logical to suppose he would side with his brother. He hadn’t confided his secret to any of those generals; he was too clever to risk a denunciation. But he was sure that as events unfolded, they would all come over without hesitation.
When would it happen? Very soon, most likely. On his birthday, May 24, just six days earlier, Luis Amiama and Juan Tomás Díaz, whom he had invited to his country house, assured him that everything was ready. Juan Tomás was categorical: “Any day now, Pupo.” They told him that President Joaquín Balaguer had probably agreed to be part of the civilian-military junta over which he would preside. He asked for details, but they couldn’t give him any; the approach had been made by Dr. Rafael Batlle Viñas, married to Indiana, Antonio de la Maza’s cousin, and Balaguer’s principal physician. He had sounded out the puppet president, asking if, in the event Trujillo disappeared suddenly, “he would collaborate with the patriots.” His reply was cryptic: “According to the Constitution, if Trujillo were to disappear, I would have to be taken into account.” Was this a good piece of news? That suave, astute little man had always inspired in Pupo Román the instinctive distrust he felt for bureaucrats and intellectuals. It was impossible to know what he was thinking; behind his affable manners and eloquence lay an enigma. But, in any case, what his friends said was true: Balaguer’s involvement would reassure the Yankees.
By the time he reached his house in Gazcue, it was nine-thirty. He sent the jeep back to San Isidro. Mireya and his son Álvaro, a young lieutenant in the Army who had come to visit them on his day off, were alarmed at seeing him in that condition. He explained what had happened as he removed his dirty clothes. He had Mireya telephone her brother and told General Virgilio García about the Chief’s outburst:
“I’m sorry, Virgilio, but I’m obliged to reprimand you. Come to my office tomorrow, before ten o’clock.”
“Shit, and all for a broken pipe,” Virgilio exclaimed in amusement. “The man can’t control his temper!”
He took a shower and soaped his entire body. When he came out of the tub, Mireya handed him clean pajamas and a silk bathrobe. She stayed with him while he dried himself, splashed on cologne, and dressed. Contrary to what many people believed, beginning with the Chief, he hadn’t married Mireya out of self-interest. He had fallen in love with the dark, timid girl, and risked his life by courting her despite Trujillo’s opposition. They were a happy couple, and in twenty years together they’d had no fights or separations. As he talked to Mireya and Álvaro at the table—he wasn’t hungry, all he wanted was rum on the rocks—he wondered what his wife’s reaction would be. Would she side with her husband or with the clan? His doubts mortified him. He had often seen Mireya indignant at the Chief’s insulting manner; perhaps that would tip the balance in his favor. Besides, what Dominican woman wouldn’t like to be the First Lady?
When supper was over, Álvaro went out to have a beer with some friends. Mireya and he went up to their bedroom and turned on the Dominican Voice. There was a program of dance music with popular singers and orchestras. Before the sanctions, the station would bring in the best Latin American performers, but due to the crisis of the past year, almost all the programs on Petán Trujillo’s television station featured local artists. As they listened to the merengues and danzones of the Generalissimo Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Luis Alberti, Mireya remarked sadly that she hoped the problems with the Church would end soon. There was a bad atmosphere, and her friends, when they played canasta, talked about rumors of a revolution and Kennedy sending in the Marines. Pupo reassured her: the Chief would get his way this time too, and the country would be pea
ceful and prosperous again. His voice sounded so false that he stopped talking, pretending he had to cough.
A short time later, there was the screech of brakes and the frantic sound of a car’s horn. The general jumped out of bed and went to the window. He made out the sharp-edged silhouette of General Arturo (Razor) Espaillat coming out of the automobile that had just pulled up. As soon as he saw his face, looking yellow in the light of the street-lamp, his heart skipped a beat: it’s happened.
“What’s going on, Arturo?” he asked, leaning his head out the window.
“Something very serious,” said General Espaillat, coming closer. “I was at the Pony with my wife, and the Chief’s Chevrolet drove past. A little while later I heard shooting. I went to see what was happening and ran into a gunfight, right in the middle of the highway.”
“I’m coming down, I’m coming down,” shouted Pupo Román. Mireya was putting on her robe as she crossed herself: “My God, my uncle, don’t let it be true, sweet Jesus.”
From that moment on, and in all the minutes and hours that followed, when his fate was decided, and the fate of his family, the conspirators, and, in the long run, the Dominican Republic, General José René Román always knew with absolute lucidity what he should do. Why did he do exactly the opposite? He would ask himself the question many times in the next few months, without finding an answer. He knew, as he went down the stairs, that under these circumstances the only sensible thing to do, if he cared anything about his life and did not want the conspiracy to fail, was to open the door for the former head of the SIM, the military man most involved in the regime’s criminal operations, the one responsible for countless abductions, acts of extortion, tortures, and murders ordered by Trujillo, and empty his revolver into him. In order to avoid going to prison or being murdered, Razor’s record left him no alternative but to maintain a doglike loyalty to Trujillo and the regime.
Although he knew this all too well, he opened the door and let in General Espaillat and his wife, whom he kissed on the cheek and tried to reassure, for Ligia Fernández de Espaillat had lost her self-control and was stammering incoherently. Razor gave him precise details: as his car approached, he heard deafening gunfire from revolvers, carbines, and submachine guns, and in the powder flashes he recognized the Chief’s Bel Air and could see a figure on the highway, shooting, maybe it was Trujillo. He couldn’t help him: he was in civilian clothes, he wasn’t armed, and fearing that Ligia might be hit by a stray bullet, he had come here. It happened fifteen minutes ago, twenty at the most.
“Wait for me, I’ll get dressed.” Román ran up the stairs, followed by Mireya, who was waving her hands and shaking her head as if she were deranged.
“We have to let Uncle Blacky know,” she exclaimed, while he was putting on his everyday uniform. He saw her run to the telephone and dial, not giving him time to open his mouth. And though he knew he ought to stop that call, he didn’t. He took the receiver and, as he buttoned his shirt, he told General Héctor Bienvenido Trujillo:
“I’ve just been informed of a possible attempt on His Excellency’s life, on the San Cristóbal highway. I’m going there now. I’ll keep you apprised.”
He finished dressing and went downstairs, carrying a loaded M-1 carbine. Instead of firing and finishing off Razor, he spared his life again, and nodded when Espaillat, his little rat’s eyes devoured by worry, advised him to alert the General Staff and order a nationwide curfew. General Román called the December 18 Fortress and directed all the garrisons to impose a rigorous quartering of troops and to close all exits from the capital, and he told the commanders in the interior that he would shortly be in telephone or radio contact with them regarding a matter of utmost urgency. He was wasting precious time, but he had to act in this way, which, he thought, would clear away any doubts about him in Razor’s mind.
“Let’s go,” he said to Espaillat.
“I’m going to take Ligia home,” he replied. “I’ll meet you on the highway. At about kilometer seven.”
When General Román drove away, at the wheel of his own car, he knew he ought to go immediately to the house of General Juan Tomás Díaz, just a few meters from his own, to confirm if the assassination had been successful—he was sure it had—and start the process of the coup. There was no escape; he was an accomplice regardless of whether Trujillo was dead or wounded. But instead of going to see Juan Tomás or Amiama, he drove his car to Avenida George Washington. Near the Fairground he saw someone signaling to him from a car: it was Colonel Marcos Antonio Jorge Moreno, head of Trujillo’s personal bodyguards, accompanied by General Pou.
“We’re worried,” Moreno shouted, leaning his head out the window. “His Excellency hasn’t arrived in San Cristóbal.”
“There was an attempt on his life,” Román informed them. “Follow me!”
At kilometer seven, when, in the beams from Moreno’s and Pou’s flashlights, he recognized the bullet-riddled Chevrolet, saw the smashed glass and bloodstains and debris on the asphalt, he knew the attempt had been successful. He had to be dead after that kind of gunfire. And therefore he ought to subdue, recruit, or kill Moreno and Pou, two self-proclaimed Trujillistas, and, before Espaillat and other military men arrived, race to the December 18 Fortress, where he would be safe. But he didn’t do that either; instead, displaying the same consternation as Moreno and Pou, he searched the area with them and was glad when the colonel found a revolver in the underbrush. Moments later Razor was there, patrols and guards arrived, and he ordered them to continue the search. He would be at the headquarters of the General Staff.
While he sat in his official car and was taken by his driver, First Sergeant Morones, to the December 18 Fortress, he smoked several Lucky Strikes. Luis Amiama and Juan Tomás must be desperately looking for him, dragging the Chief’s body around with them. It was his duty to send them some kind of signal. But instead of doing that, when he reached the headquarters of the General Staff he instructed the guards not to allow in any civilians, no matter who they were.
He found the Fortress in a state of bustling activity inconceivable at this hour under normal circumstances. As he hurried up the stairs to his command post and responded in kind to the officers who saluted him, he heard questions—“An attempted landing across from the Fairground, General?”—which he did not stop to answer.
He went into his office in a state of agitation, feeling his heart pound, and a simple glance at the twenty or so high-ranking officers gathered there was enough to let him know that despite the lost opportunities, he still had a chance to put the Plan into effect. The officers who, when they saw him, clicked their heels and saluted were a group representing the high command, friends, for the most part, and they were waiting for his orders. They knew or intuited that a terrifying vacuum had just been created, and, educated in the tradition of discipline and total dependence on the Chief, they expected him to assume command, with clarity of purpose. Fear and hope were on the faces of Generals Fernando A. Sánchez, Radhamés Hungría, Fausto Caamaño, and Félix Hermida, Colonels Rivera Cuesta and Cruzado Piña, Majors Wessin y Wessin, Pagán Montás, Saldaña, Sánchez Pérez, Fernández Domínguez, and Hernando Ramírez. They wanted him to rescue them from an uncertainty against which they had no defense. A speech delivered in the voice of a leader who has his balls in the right place and knows what he is doing, explaining that in this dire circumstance the disappearance or death of Trujillo, for reasons yet to be determined, provided the Republic with a providential opportunity for change. Above all, they must avoid chaos, anarchy, a Communist revolution and its corollary, occupation by the Americans. They, who were patriots by vocation and profession, had the duty to act. The country had touched bottom, placed under quarantine because of the excesses of a regime which, although in the past it had performed services that could never be repaid, had degenerated into a tyranny that provoked universal revulsion. It was necessary to move events forward, with an eye to the future. If they followed him, together they would close the abyss
that had begun to open before them. As head of the Armed Forces he would preside over a civilian-military junta, composed of prominent figures and responsible for guaranteeing a transition to democracy, which would allow the lifting of sanctions imposed by the United States and elections under the supervision of the OAS. The junta had the approval of Washington, and from them, the leaders of the most prestigious institution in the country, he expected cooperation. He knew his words would have been greeted with applause, and whoever had doubts would have been won over by the conviction of the others. It would be easy then to order executive officers like Fausto Caamaño and Félix Hermida to arrest the Trujillo brothers and round up Abbes García, Colonel Figueroa Carrión, Captain Candito Torres, Clodoveo Ortiz, Américo Dante Minervino, César Rodríguez Villeta, and Alicinio Peña Rivera, thereby immobilizing the machinery of the SIM.
But, though he knew with certainty what he ought to do and say at that moment, he didn’t do that either. After a few seconds of hesitant silence, he limited himself to informing the officers, in vague, broken, stammering terms, that in view of the attempt on the person of the Generalissimo, the Armed Forces must be like a fist, ready to strike. He could feel, touch the disappointment of his subordinates, whom he was infecting with his own uncertainty instead of infusing them with confidence. This was not what they were hoping for. To hide his confusion, he communicated with the garrisons in the interior. He repeated to General César A. Oliva, in Santiago, General García Urbáez, in Dajabón, and General Guarionex Estrella, in La Vega, in the same hesitant way—his tongue barely obeyed him, as if he were drunk—that due to the presumed assassination, they should confine their troops to barracks and take no action without his authorization.
After the round of phone calls, he broke out of the secret straitjacket that bound him and took a step in the right direction:
“Don’t leave,” he announced, getting to his feet. “I’m calling an immediate high-level meeting.”